A Systemic Framework for Accelerating Collaboration-Centered Knowledge Management Strategy

Abstract

Knowledge is today more than ever the most critical resource of organizations. However, at the same time it is also the least-accessible resource that is difficult to share, imitate, buy, sell, store, or evaluate. Organizations should thus have an explicit strategy for the management of their knowledge resources. In this research the authors pay special attention to a knowledge management (KM) strategy called collaboration-centered strategy. This strategy builds on the assumption that a significant part of personal knowledge can be captured and transferred, and new knowledge created through deep collaboration between the organization’s members. A critical element in the collaboration-centered KM strategy is the facilitation process that involves managing relationships between people, tasks and technology. The authors describe how the Collaboration Engineering approach with packaged facilitation techniques called ThinkLets is able to contribute to this endeavour.